Thuraya has made great progress in including its ITU (International Telecoms Union) assigned country code (+88216) to become part of the global telecom network.

As of today, around 120 telecom operators in more than 105 countries have programmed their networks to accept calls to Thuraya.

Thuraya customers having the 88216 prefix can receive calls from the 120 telecom operators where the Thuraya code has already been implemented. More networks are to follow soon, a Thuraya official said.

As on date, Thuraya has signed about 50 service provider agreements in its coverage area, and many more are to be finalised by end-year.

The company has also signed 94 roaming agreements with reputed operators in three continents and is in the process of finalising others. It has 29 commercial roaming partners who are operational, offering subscribers the freedom to roam with Thuraya.

The company will also offer Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) in its mobile satellite phone, the official said.

The new feature implements the WAP version 1.2 stack in the handset, with operational capability over both the GSM and GEM networks.

WAP is an open global standard for communication between a mobile handset and Internet or other computer application.

WAP-based technology enables the design of advanced, interactive and real-time mobile services, such as mobile banking or Internet-based news services, which can be used in digital mobile phones or other mobile devices.

The WAP specification enables solutions from various equipment suppliers to work consistently for end-users on the digital networks.

WAP has very similar capabilities to the Web, but it adds one very important feature: optimisation for low-bandwidth, low-memory, and low-display capability environments. These include wireless phones, pagers, PDAs, and virtually any other communications device.